Forward on Fire

 

I apologize in advance to those of you who like photos, because this post will not have any. I also realize that I forgot a very important point about the Mallards game on Thursday night, that it was Bring Everything But the Dog Night. Not that many people brought pets, but I heard someone had a rabbit, and we saw a cat, a three-legged goat, a black sheep, and a baby calf, and we even got to pet raccoons! Oh, and of course someone brought a dog.

I also failed to mention that during pagode practice we heard a train horn. I knew the train tracks ran right behind the Quadra, so I asked if the back door was open, thinking I'd go out to watch it. The leader said, "It shouldn't be," but she checked it and it was unlocked, so she locked it. People asked me, "How did you know?" but I just wanted to see the train. However, it was so loud inside that I would have gone deaf if I'd been outside. Still, it feels like God talking to me in trains again, like I'm on the right track studying all this Brazilian music (Samba, choro, and now pagode) and doing Portuguese on DuoLingo. Are we going to end up in Brazil someday? Right now it's all just a lot of fun.

This morning Travalon and I met Tiffy for coffee, then he went down to the Union Terrace while we just hung out on the roof of her sister's apartment building, had lunch sitting outside at the Globe (where I saw one of our faculty members), got bubble tea, and went back to the roof. When Travalon returned, we went to Breese Stevens Field to watch the Forward soccer team, who are having a really good year. I was getting a bit alarmed because the Flock, the ardent fans who sing and play drums, were not gathering, so I googled it and they had disbanded. But then people did show up, playing drums, waving flags, and shooting off pink smoke as they sang songs with complex lyrics like, "Oh, Madison, Madison, Madison, Madison," and, "Forward, Forward, Forward." We sat near the Flock, so in the first half we could barely see it when they got a goal. In the second half we did see their goal clearly, but then for some reason Naples FC got to take a penalty shot, and those are so hard for the goalie to stop, so they had a point. There was a ton of stoppage time because of injuries, but then the Forward scored again in stoppage time! So they won 3-1! This is the seventh game in a row they haven't lost, but some were ties so they didn't win seven in a row. Still, their record is really good this year. 

A bunch of people from the Shamrock Club were down at the Union Terrace listening to the New Dubliners, but Tiffy was tired, Travalon was tired, and my FitBit had a low battery because I kept forgetting to charge it. Famie said the New Dubliners are not like the old ones, so I assumed that meant they didn't play trad music, and indeed I found a video online, and they played rock. Travalon was slightly more interested, but not enough to go see them (and he'd spent quite a bit of time at the Terrace already today), and I was not interested at all, so we just came home. I'm not one of those people who is going to love everything automatically just because it came from Ireland. I do really love traditional Celtic art and traditional Irish music, and I'm intrigued by the language, but not everyone in Ireland is into the old stuff, which is fine! I'm just not that into the new stuff.

Famous Hat